Material Calculator - Size and Mass in a Tube

A calculator for estimating volume and weight (mass) in a cylindrical or truncated cone shaped tube. A truncated cone is a cone with the tip cut off, an open pointing tube. Choose the shape and enter the dimensions and the density and click Calculate. Volume and mass of the tube's inside will be calculated. The dimensions have to be measured in the inside of the tube, not on the outside.

Examples: a hose with a length of 8 meters and a diameter of 2.1 centimeters has a capacity of 2.77 liters of water. A two-meter-long pipe with a diameter of 15 centimeters has a capacity of 35.34 liters.

If you can't see inside the tube, you have to measure the outside diameter and use the known or estimated casing thickness to determine the inner diameter. This is the outer diameter minus two times the casing thickness.

The diameter is twice as important for the volume as the length. This is because the length only describes one dimension, but the diameter describes two, namely width and height. This is reflected in the formula for the volume of a cylinder, which is pi times the radius squared times the height. The formula for the truncated cone is more complicated, but the principle is the same.

Pipes are often straight, but not always. A hose like the one in the example above can of course be both straight and curved. However, this doesn't matter for the volume, it doesn't change that. But bends make measuring the length more difficult. If there are one or more bends, the length must be measured exactly in the middle of the pipe or determined in another way. It is a different matter if the bending is accompanied by stretching or compression, in which case the content can very well change. Since stretching and compression can put strain on the material, they should be avoided anyway.